Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Cruz Praises Wingnut Bigot

We’ve already written about Ted Cruz, almost certainly the next senator from the state of Texas (he’s the Republican nominee, which pretty much guarantees him the seat) and his ties to the loony right. He was introduced at the Values Voters Summit by Rick Scarborough, one of the craziest of the bunch. Scarborough says Cruz is “grounded by faith and principle.” Cruz then calls Scarborough a “tremendous patriot and voice for Christian values.” Among other things, Scarborough claims that AIDS is God’s punishment on gay people.

Comments

So, this person’s god is punishing gay people in the US by killing babies in…say, South Africa where HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5? What a disgusting waste of air he is.

As of the end of 2010 (the last year for which statistic have been officially released) there were an estimated 34 million people on Earth living with HIV. That includes 2.7 million new infections that year, but not the estimated 1.8 million AIDS-related deaths. Of that 34 million, 22.7 million (67%) live in sub-Saharan Africa. Of that 34 million, 3.4 million (10%) were children aged 14 or younger. Of the 30.6 million adults, 15.7 million (51%) were adult women.

Since 2006, HIV/AIDS has been the leading cause of death among women in their reproductive years. More than 70% of the children with HIV are younger than 4 years old: HIV cannot cross the placental barrier but it can be passed transvaginally when the child is born, and it does express in breast milk.

In the United States, HIV is more closely tied to poverty and poor education than it is to sexual orientation. A study by the CDC released last year showed that, normalized into number of cases per 100,000 population, HIV is much more prevalent in the US South. The most likely theories as to why are religious and social pressure to appear heterosexual, the lack of meaningful education programs in high schools, universities and the community, and the almost total lack of testing and treatment options.

Go to the page I linked above (damn one-link rule) and look for the “Persons Living With an HIV Diagnosis, 2009″ link in the middle of the page to see an interactive map of HIV prevalence in the US.

Huh. God’s punishing gays with an infections agent that can be spread to spouses whose only “sin” is to be ignorant that their spouse is cheating on them, and that doesn’t even target every single gay person.

You’d think that if God wanted to punish gays he’d’ve made it so that the act of gay sex (the wingnuts know what I mean by that!) would lead to some sort of muscular degenerative disease or something.

Ellie & slc1, goes to show how evil the gays are. Look at all those innocent African people who would be alive today if it weren’t for the wickedness of the queers. And don’t even get me started on what they’re doing to the soil.

Wow Gregory, I had thought Aids prevalence was trending the right way and harms were being reduced. Clearly the problem is staggeringly horrific. This underlines just how evil the anti-condom efforts of the Catholic Church is.

Now Matty, if you look at the soil around any large U.S. city with a big underground homosexual population – Des Moines, Iowa, perfect example. Look at the soil around Des Moines, Matty. You can’t build on it, you can’t grow anything in it. The government says it’s due to poor farming. But I know what’s really going on, Matty. I know it’s the queers. They’re in it with the aliens. They’re building landing strips for gay Martians. I swear to God.

I watched Cruz’s speech last weekend, it was the creepiest of the entire summit. Not only does he look like the archetypical use car salesman with his oily, slicked-back hair, but every time he reached an applause line, he would pause and look out over the audience with a smirk on his face.

It’s a most unpleasant trait, and Cruz will be a serious downgrade from Kay Bailey Hutchison come November, given that the Democrats is not likely to come close to winning.

Concussions are God’s punishment on athletes, lung cancer and emphysema are God’s punishment on miners, and Alzheimer’s is God’s punishment on older people. In fact, since everybody in the Bible eventually died of something or other, God punished everybody (including Jesus, who died horribly before he was resurrected). Actually, there is one Biblical personage who didn’t die, the prophet Elijah, who according to tradition was taken up to heaven alive. So God didn’t punish Elijah (tho he might have ended up with some serious corner time once in heaven).

I’ve never gotten the whole “AIDS is God’s punishment for gay sex” thing since it only works if LITERALLY every instance of homosexual intercourse resulted in the disease (which isn’t the case, of course).

It strikes me that the whole fundie thing of a) knowing what their God thinks, coupled with b) the uncanny similarity to what the fundie, themselves, thinks, suggests that if one were to ask if, were they given the power to decide either way, they would also choose to ‘punish’ gay people by infecting them HIV/AIDS.

E.G. Would the fundie support the idea of actually, purposefully, intentionally, infecting people who have homosexual sex?

I think this would make an excellent question at a Q&A session for these wingnuts.

Because, if they claimed that they would personally *not* choose to infect people who have homosexual sex, then they are clearly disagreeing with their God. If they do not disagree with their God, however, then they, by default, would also choose to infect people, were they given free reign with which to do so.